


Never Meant to Let You Go

by immortalbanner



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Banner-centric, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), because whats new, elements of the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalbanner/pseuds/immortalbanner
Summary: Bruce knew eventually he'd have find out if anyone he cared about had died in the Snap. None of them really happened the way he'd hoped.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Jennifer Walters, Bruce Banner & Rick Jones, past Bruce Banner/Betty Ross
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	Never Meant to Let You Go

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you but I have issues with the MCU never acknowledging relationships Bruce had outside of the Avengers. I'm just hoping we're told what happened to Jen in She-Hulk. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Bruce had had his fairshare of bad jobs in his time but compiling together all the names of those who had died in the Snap wasn’t the easiest job in the world.

They’d set up an online system for people to submit their loved ones information to compile together who had died. It proved to be effective since there were already almost two-billion submissions. Each country was taking care of their own people but the few hundred million in the United States was still hard to get through.

He heard the sound of footsteps enter the lab. He turned his head to see Tony.

He’d hadn’t really seen much of him lately. Bruce had barely left the compound’s lab while Tony had been flying back and forth between New York and his home in California.

“Have you slept?” he asked as he approached the desk.

He’d had a few naps but part of him refused to sleep for longer than an hour. He shouldn’t sleep until he knew the names of every person who had perished because of their failure.

“Enough. I haven’t really focussed on anything else.”

Tony stared down at him. There weren’t many people left at the compound. Thor was trying to find a home for the Asgardians, Steve had flown back to DC, Rhodey stayed in his apartment, Clint hadn’t come back from his ranch, and Nat had barely left her room.

“You need to take a break,” he said.

He shook his head. “I can’t.” He submitted another name to the offical register. The kid was only eight years old.

Tony sat down in the chair next to him. “You’re killing yourself, Banner.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s fine, Tony. You don’t get seven PhD’s while having a full time career with a healthy amount of sleep.”

He looked unconvinced. “Has anyone you know died?”

He felt a knot in his stomach. “I’m too scared to look.” He barely had enough energy to even say that, much less to go and find out for himself. There were only three people he was concerned about. Everyone else in his life was dead or so estranged he was probably nothing more than a distant memory to them who occasionally appeared on the news. He wondered how many remembered him well enough to know it was him who was turning into a green monster,

From the corner of his eye, he saw Tony give him a sympathetic look. “It’s rough. I don’t think anyone’s really dealing with it well. Cap’s thinking about helping to start support groups.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the screen as he documented a 23 year old girls death. Was she barely out of college? Had she just started working at the job her degree allowed her to get? “Okay. That sounds like a good idea.”

He felt Tony still staring at him as he documented another person. A man who was thirty-three. He was married to another man, thirty-five, who’d also died. They had left behind their four year old daughter. Too young to understand the idea of death. Was she crying as she asked where her dads were?

“I’ll leave you to work. Make sure to get some rest.”

He heard Tony leave the room and Bruce clicked the next person. The persons profile came up and it made his jaw drop.

It couldn’t possibly be her, not probably the most important person to him.

_Jennifer Susan Walters._

He leaned back in his chair, feeling his heart race.

Not Jen. Please god, not Jen. The only family he still had out there.

His eyes welled with tears. They stung and he did his best to wipe them away but they came out too fast.

_“Bruuuuuuuuuucie! Come on, help me get my cat!”_

_Bruce jogged towards his cousin with all the energy typical to his nine year old self. Little Jenny was only seven and couldn’t climb trees well quite yet. She was reaching her arms over heard head and jumping as high as her little legs could take her but she was still so far away from her cat lounging on a branch six feet off the ground._

_“Okay, I’ve got her,” he said, climbing up the tree while Jenny clapped her hands in excitement._

_“Don’t drop her!” she called up when he reached the branch that her kitten was on. She seemed unbothered by his presence as she licked her arm._

_He picked her up and climbed down. He jumped the small height down and handed Jenny her cat._

_She nuzzled against her cat with a gleeful smile. “Thank’s Bruce,” she beamed up at him. “Now, c’mon, you promised to help me with my tea party.”_

He’d talked to Jen as much as he could when he had first come back to New York. She was practicing law in the city after moving from Los Angeles so it was easy to see each other. He’d hadn’t seen her since before the events with Ultron and Sakovia. He had only hoped she hadn’t perished. Now he regretted not looking further into it.

He had to find her friends so he could figure out a funeral. They had no living relatives left. He wasn’t even sure if she had a girlfriend. For all he knew she got married when he was on Sakaar.

He stood up from his computer and decided that he needed a long sleep.

* * *

It had turned out Jen’s friends had arranged a wake for her already. They hadn’t known the two of them were related. He’d expected that, Jen made jokes about not wanting to be asked for favours if people knew they were family.

Bruce didn’t make an effort to talk to anyone at the wake. He wasn’t sure who were friends and who were simply coworkers. He mostly stayed in the background as everyone talked about the woman that they knew. Bruce focussed on remembering the little girl who he saw every summer, who he’d take out to get ice cream. Who had been his rock in some of his hardest times in his adult life.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Jen,” he mumbled to himself as he looked at her photograph. It was a professional sort of portrait, probably what she used when people were looking her up. She was smiling at the camera while wearing a pantsuit. It solidified the professionalism she’d probably wanted to portray.

He heard someone clear their throat behind him. He turned to see a woman watching him.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you.”

He stared back at her. “No, uh, it’s fine.”

The woman was silent before her shoulders deflated. “I thought about coming to say ‘sorry for your loss’ but now I’m realising that’s probably not the most fitting thing to say.”

He shrugged, shuffling on his feet. “Guess not. But I guess it’s kind of nice to be spoken to.”

“I think no one here really knows how to talk to you. Jen never really mentioned you two were related.”

It was always weird hearing himself be spoken about with public notoriety. He knew he had it but he never saw himself on the level of Cap, Thor, or Tony. He wasn’t all that fond of being known as a scientist who turned himself into an angry and dangerous monster. If he didn’t know Jen so well, he would’ve thought she kept their relation secret out of embarrassment.

“Don’t worry, I’d only Hulk out if you make me angry enough,” he joked. He didn’t smile and neither did the woman. Making jokes about Hulk had only been recent development. They were easier to make as Hulk had been dormant for the past few weeks.

The woman cleared her throat. “I’ll get back to where I was.”

He watched her walk away.

He looked back at the picture of Jen. From his pocket, he pulled out a picture he’d found and printed out for the occasion. It was the two of them, her fourteen and him sixteen. They were both poking their tongues out at the camera while they had their arms over the other’s shoulders. It was tangible evidence that he had been happy at one time in his life.

He set the picture against the overly professional one.

“I’m so sorry, Jenny,” he whispered as a couple tears ran down his face.

He left the wake, not saying bye to anyone.

…

Bruce felt like documenting all the deaths would never truly come to an end. He’d gone through a few hundred thousand at that point but it seemed endless at that point. It was the only way they’d get through all of the names. Tony came up with the idea to create a mural where each city would have a place to display the names of the dead.

Rhodey had come to help him get through the names, allowing them to split the work. Even the presence of another person was at least a comfort so he wouldn’t have some sort of breakdown without another person to at least be there.

They worked in silence in the lab. It wasn’t exactly the most conversational activity. Bruce had gone though at least a few hundred in the past couple of hours.

He had been worried he’d become numb to the names. But he was still far from it. Each name was a person they had failed and he had to face the reparations of it. He was used to getting only a few hours of sleep after being a college professor in two disciplines while trying to figure out radiation resistance.

While he hadn’t become totally detached from the work, he’d managed to figure out a pace where he was able to continue. Every now and against when a child would show up he’d have to stop for a few moments though. He couldn’t allow himself to become so apathetic he’d stopped caring.

But that pace got disrupted by an all too familiar name. One he’d kind of guessed would show up eventually because he’d hadn’t heard from him but had hoped, that somehow, someway, he wasn’t one of them.

_Richard Milhouse Jones._

His breathing became shallow. He couldn’t be gone because of his failure too, almost like the gauntlet knew who to target.

_“You really built this place?” Rick asked, looking around the hideout Bruce had built to hide from the army. It worked as a lab, had a functioning kitchen, a bed for himself, and could only be accessed through a voice command and password. It was scarcely put together but it was in a location that you couldn’t find unless you knew about it._

_“Not too bad, right?” Bruce smiled from behind the kitchen island._

_He smiled. “I forget you’re a huge nerd.”_

_Bruce laughed. “Well, it’s safe and a good temporary solution.”_

_“Well, I am getting you those fake IDs. They should be ready soon.”_

_He gave a sigh of relief. “Good. I can’t wait to get out of here.”_

_“You know where you’re going yet?”_

_He gestured to the multiple books on speaking Portuguese in font of him. “Brazil.”_

He had a lot of fond memories of Rick. There was about an eight year age gap between the two of them, creating a weird brotherly relationship between them. Rick was a senior at Culver when he’d started teaching there. They’d become friends purely because Rick always saw him sitting alone when he ate lunch and had assumed he was a PhD student since he was pretty young compared to other professors. Even though Rick always told him he had an old soul.

“You okay, Banner?”

Bruce flinched and looked at Rhodey who had paused his work. He swallowed. “My best friend. He died from the snap.”

Rhodey gaped at him. He knew Rhodey would have no idea who he was talking about because he was never a fan of talking about his personal life or his relationships.

“Do you need to take a break? I can handle things for the rest of the day.”

He paused and then he nodded. Sleeping when he’d found out Jen had died had been the best for him. Rick was like family to him and he definitely needed it this time too.

He stood up. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

He nodded. “Take care of yourself.”

He made a mental note of that. But it didn’t ease that pain two of the most important people to him were dead.

* * *

Rick had friends who’d already had a wake for him. He’d given his ex-wife Marlo a call and she’d apologised for not contacting him. Rick had apparently talked a lot about him to her. They were already divorced when he had returned to New York to join the Avengers but he’d always spoken fondly of her.

He hadn’t attempted to call Rick out of pure fear he was dead. The dread of it made him sick but now he regretted allowing it get in his way. He’d really missed his best friends funeral when he’d have easily been there if he’d just goddamn called.

He laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling. There was no tombstone to go to, no wake to pay his respects to. He didn’t even know if Marlo had collected his ashes and put him somewhere safe.

He’d hadn’t seen him in three years. If he hadn’t been so worried about Thanos when he’d finally gotten back to earth, he would’ve called Rick and Jen as well. Now both of them were gone forever.

There was only one other person who was left that he wasn’t sure had died.

He’d hadn’t spoken to Betty since everything that had happened in 2010. Between Blonsky and finally breaking the shackles that the military had put him under, he’d never had a real goodbye with Betty before leaving for Canada.

When he’d calmed down in New York he decided it was for the best to wait before trying to contact Betty. He’d assumed she didn’t want anything to do with him so he’d thought it was for the best.

He sat up and picked up his phone. He hoped she hadn’t changed her number.

He dialled in her number since he’d never had the nerve to save number in his contacts.

He listened to the tone as his heart raced in his chest.

Except he instead was answered with exactly what he was dreading.

_“Unfortunately, the person you are trying to contact has passed as a result of what is known as the Snap during the Infinity War. If you would like to know more information about the Infinity War please visit–“_

He hung up his phone and tossed it onto his bed. His eyes welled up with tears.

_Bruce set down a wine glass at his and Betty’s table. He’d made the both of them dinner for their three year anniversary. They’d decided against going out to a fancy dinner or anything of the sorts. Betty sat at their table comfortably in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants._

_“Ooh, is this my favourite?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine._

_He nodded with a smile. “Well it is a special occasion.”_

_She smiled back at him over her glass. “Well I’ll drink to that.”_

_He got in his own glass and they clinked glasses._

_He really had to get to at least thinking about finding her a ring. Maybe Jen will help him._

Gone. Gone before he’d had a chance to at the very least make amends with her and apologise for everything. If things hadn’t gone how they’d had, maybe they’d have gotten married. Or maybe they’d have broken up for another reason and they’d both be with different people.

There had to have been a funeral or one coming up. He picked up his phone and dialled Ross’s number.

He still hated Ross but there was no other way to get to Betty. He knew if he didn’t ask about a funeral he wouldn’t get invited to it if it hadn’t happened yet.

“Yes, hello?” Ross’s voice came, sounding annoyed.

“It’s Banner.”

There was a pause before he answered. “I have to assume you found out about Betty?”

“Yeah. I just… I wanted to know if there was going to be a funeral for her.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. There was. We’ve already had it.”

He felt his stomach sink. Of course he’d missed it. Of course he couldn’t even be there for her in goddamn death.

A long silence had passed and he didn’t know if he’d expected some sort of apology from Ross. Of course it was purposeful of him to not invite him. He’d never approved of their relationship all that much to begin with and it was made worse after Hulk had put her into hospital.

He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. “Okay. Uh, I have work to do. But thanks for taking my call.” He hung up before anything else could be said.

He fell back onto his back in his bed. He was okay with being away from his work for the rest of the day.

He wasn’t a particularly religious man. But if there was any chance Jen, Rick, and Betty could hear him, he whispered three words.

“I’m so sorry.”


End file.
